The Shopcreator team would like to say a big thank you to those that participated in the beta testing release of the new and improved Transact. The Beta Testing has come to an end and we are pleased to announce that the new and improved Transact platform is now available.

To open a free online shop, click here.

The winner of the beta testing prize draw is Yvonne Carmichael who has won a bottle of champagne. Congratulations Yvonne!

We hope you will all find the new and improved Transact store easy to use and a fantastic tool to help grow your business in this busy retail period.

Specialist e-commerce software company, Shopcreator have re-designed their free online shop creation product – 'Transact' to help small start up business's who may be concerned about starting a new retail business in the current volatile market.

Shopcreator was one of the first e-commerce software providers in the UK, and have been operating for over ten years with an extensive and varied client base throughout the UK, Ireland and Europe. Their existing client base ranges from leading high street retailers such as BHS, The Science Museum and Neal's Yard Dairy to new business's and small start up retailers who are looking to expand their client base, and ultimately sustain and grow sales in what has become a challenging economic environment for many retailers.

Shopcreator recognizes a gap in the market for an affordable and professional e-commerce tool to help small businesses grow and become profitable online enterprises . As a result Transact has been assessed and re-designed according to customer and market requirements. Transact is different from other e-commerce platforms on the market because it is a free business development tool utilising a revenue based pricing model, allowing retailer's to 'pay as they sell' greatly reducing financial risk.

Alex Coghlan, Product Director of Shopcreator explains the thinking behind Transact's re-design strategy:-

"Transact's revenue based fee structure provides new and small business's with the ability to setup and run an online store without the initial capital expenditure usually associated with creating and administering an e-Commerce shop."

Shopcreator's free Transact platform is built on a 'five-step' setup process to ensure quick and easy installation for retailers with limited IT capabilities. The five steps include choosing layout and design; adding products; adding content, setting up payment and entering shipping prices for relevant dispatch areas. The process has been designed in such a way that a small retailer could be trading online in less than half an hour.

Transact uses PayPal as their sole payment service provider as it's one of the most widely used payment methods with over 15 million UK accounts and over 153 million worldwide. Customers don't require a PayPal account to perform a transaction and it allows for all major credit cards, debit cards and bank transfer payments to be made quickly and most importantly - securely.

New Transact users will benefit from features such as product search, newsletter sign up, un-limited information pages, a choice of search engine friendly templates. Transact is backed up with a comprehensive support package including free UK based telephone support and access to an interactive forum and blog.

Many Transact customers who initially began business as a small online retailer have seen such a fast return on investment and success with the platform that they have since upgraded to Shopcreator's more advanced platform – 'Retailer' to maximize profits and sustain continued growth.

Shopcreator has a flexible offering of packages with their 'Transact' and 'Retailer' platforms targeted at small to medium sized retailers. For further information please contact Alex stephens at Shopcreator.

Tel: 0113 201 8136 Email: alexs@shopcreator.com

Specialist e-Commerce company Shopcreator worked against the clock to ensure the cut in VAT was accounted for and integrated into all of its e-Commerce products. The VAT cut was administered in time for new trading prices on Monday, 1st December at what is considered to be the busiest retail period of the year with Christmas less than a month away.

The government has now confirmed a 2.5% reduction in VAT from 17.5% to 15% as of Monday, 1st December, 2008 in an attempt to inject some confidence into consumer spending and to boost the economy. However, whether this is a viable change for the masses in relation to the limited timescale and administration costs involved is under huge scrutiny and debate.

It is recorded that there are 47 million businesses in the UK, 99.3% of these are small businesses according to the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Form (BERR). It is these small to medium sized retailers that are feeling the strain of this administration change due to the lack of financial infrastructure and personnel in place to administer new pricing compared with the larger retailers such as supermarkets and department stores.

Many retailers have stocked up for the Christmas trading period as early as September and will have priced up a larger than normal inventory supply for the Christmas spending that appears to have come earlier than normal this year as consumers try hard to spread their costs in the lead up to Christmas.

The VAT implications will cause many problems for e-Commerce retailers that run on a Content Management System (CMS) that aren't managed by a development company as their VAT rates will be hard-coded into their CMS system making it virtually impossible to amend.

In addition, latest news from large online auction house and shopping website - eBay have announced that all seller's must reflect the change in VAT on all listings and that all seller's must manually amend the VAT themselves causing further frustration for many traders. In addition to administering the amend themselves, all eBay sellers need to close any running listings that are due to end past the 1st December and incur additional listings charges for uploading the same items again following the 1st December.

Shopcreator pride themselves on being customer focused and endeavour to reduce the complexities of running and maintaining an online store in the current turbulent market. As a result, Alex Coghlan, Product Director insisted all VAT rates be changed automatically saving Shopcreator's customers time and stress in this busy and challenging period. Alex explains:- "the government's decision to change the VAT rate in one week has put an additional pressure and cost on businesses during the busy period between now and Christmas. As a result we decided to automatically update the VAT rate for all of our customer's stores at no cost so they can concentrate their time and effort on maintaining their excellent retail services for their customers."

Whilst administering the amend in VAT, Shopcreator have revamped their free online shop – 'Transact' to include a brand new choice of web templates as well as re-designing the setup procedure to a simple 5 stage process allowing those with no web design knowledge to setup a store in less than half an hour. The new and improved Transact store was launched on the 9th December, 2008 and can be setup directly from the Shopcreator website: www.shopcreator.com

The end of 2008 is drawing to a close and it has been a trying year for many businesses and consumers. Rising living costs and inflation rates has caused spending to be cut severely in the leisure and retail sectors forcing many businesses into restructure and administration. However, Leeds based e-commerce company - Shopcreator have recognised the need for a solution to allow small to medium sized retailers ride out the storm of the credit crunch with free shopping cart platform – 'Transact'

E-commerce is the way forward Despite the retail sector being hit hard, ecommerce solutions are still proving to keep many retailers afloat as the UK enter what is forecast to be a deep and prolonged recession. A recent survey by Nielsen Online has revealed that the number of people shopping on the internet has increased from 10% to 85% in two years with the UK having the second highest percentage of online shoppers globally. There are various reasons for the growth in online spending. Consumers often find high street products cheaper on the internet due to the seller's reduced overhead costs. Many sites offer customer comments pages allowing people to review previous customers experience with price comparison shopping sites becoming increasingly popular and big business in the UK.

Convenience of course plays a major factor in online shopping. As people's lives become more fragmented and cluttered, the internet has become a crucial tool to co-ordinate and manage peoples' lives whether it's shopping for clothes, online banking or booking next year's summer holiday. Many business's offer free delivery on products with the major supermarkets capitalising on online stores for those that don't have their own transport or simply don't have the time to grocery shop.

Risk assessment and cost In the current economic climate, investing money into your retail business could be detrimental to its survival throughout the next two years. Risks need to be calculated and costs need to be kept to an absolute minimum which makes any plans of online expansion difficult, right? Wrong! There are hundreds of ecommerce solutions available on the market, however there are not hundreds of cost effective e-commerce solutions for small start up business's who have a limited cash flow. Transact has been designed on a 'pay as you sell' pricing model allowing small to medium sized retail businesses to create their own online website saving time, money and reducing financial risk to the business completely free of charge. There are no subscription fees or support charges, each retailer simply pays a small commission on each item sold.

Raise your profile Launching an online shop for your business does not just open an additional distribution channel for your products but raises your brand identity on a national and global scale. The potential reach with the internet and popular search engines such as Google becomes unlimited. Shopcreator's Transact platform has been specially designed with a choice of search engine friendly templates to choose from in order to maximise your online visibility. In addition, e-commerce platforms prove to be successful viral marketing tools, recent survey results show that the average internet shopper tells twelve people whether it be co-workers, family or friends of their recent online purchases which will increase with the number of people getting online.

What you get for free Start up retailers can benefit from a platform like Transact by using features such as product search, newsletter sign up, un-limited information pages, a choice of search engine friendly web templates and a variety of online support to help small retailers set up business online including an interactive forum and blog. PayPal is used as their sole payment service provider as it's one of the most widely used payment methods with over 15 million UK accounts and over 153 million worldwide. Customers don't require a PayPal account to perform a transaction and it allows for all major credit cards, debit cards and bank transfer payments to be made quickly and most importantly - securely.

Transact provides the perfect solution for small or new start up retailers to expand their distribution channels, increase sales and survive effects of the credit crunch and the forthcoming recession. For further information about Transact or Shopcreator's other ecommerce platforms, visit www.shopcreator.com or contact Alex Stephens for further information.

About Shopcreator: Selfserve acquired Shopcreator in November, 2007. Since 1998, Shopcreator have been delivering award winning e-commerce software to the retail and mail order sectors, spanning clients that range from those who are new to ecommerce, to the UK's leading high street retailers. Selfserve is a limited company and is headquartered in Leeds, UK.

Internet sales will be up 15% this year compared to last say the e-Retail Sales Index authors, way down on the 54% growth seen last year -- but encouraging nonetheless

A total of £13.16 billion will be spent online by British shoppers in the run up to Christmas -- equivalent to £215 for every person in the UK -- say IMRG and Capgemini, an increase of 15% in year on year sales but a slowdown in growth when compared to the 54% year on year increase seen in 2007.

Key findings in November's analysis include:

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Our Transact stores are very diverse in the products they sell. The team at Shopcreator take great pleasure in seeing a number of retailers branching out into developing some really well defined propositions tailored to niche audiences. It is one of the key benefits of Transact pricing model that any customer can enter the market at no risk.

Of course these days a really unique store idea will generate good traffic from search engines. This is because a store selling t-shirts will be competing against many others whereas one selling historical memorabilia, books and...well...oddities will have very few competitors.

This is the case with My Little Bit of History which is amongst other things selling a signed copy of Terry Waites autobiography, a 95 million year old dinosaur tooth (no really) and a copy of Bono's Signature.

Here's what they say about themselves:

My Little Bit Of History is where you can see and buy a little bit of history of your very own. Through a wide range of sources we hunt down those things that aren't always much money but are always interesting to us. It amazes me what really interesting things can still be found, some of which I find incredible when I think of the history of them, or who they have been signed by or just simply what they are. This seems all the more significant somehow in todays modern disposable world. Please have a browse through and hopefully you too will be intrigued by some of the items we have got. We are a great place to maybe start a collection and most of our things make the most fantastic presents that are most certainly different and a "little bit of history"

You can see the My Little Bit of History store here.